Tellus ready for consultations over Australia's first salt mine south of Alice Springs

Updated
Thu 12 Jun 2014, 11:22 AM AEST

A mining company with plans to open Australian's first underground salt mine in the Northern Territory has completed its final review, opening the way for the next stage of the project.

Tellus Holdings wants to develop a mine near the community of Titjikala, about 120km south of Alice Springs.

It would be capable of producing five billion tonnes of salt for the lucrative Asian market.

Managing director Duncan van der Merwe said all the technical and commercial studies had been successfully completed.

He said the next step was to complete feasibility studies and get regulatory approvals.

"One of the key stakeholder groups is progressing to a more extensive community engagement program, particularly in the central Australia region where we look forward to letting key parties know more about our project and giving the community an opportunity to engage with Tellus," Mr van der Merwe said.

"At the end of that stage we come to another gate and it's at that gate we're subject to all the approvals in place and the business case stacking up that hopefully will commence the start of construction for the project."